The lemmings fear ghosts thing also can lead to a ton of fiddly stuff.
Unless you want to call ghosts a gimmick, too, because they were part of the list, but the same is true for zombies (these two gimmicks were activated by default). So in that case, we could be nitpicky and say gimmicks were never fully removed, becaues zombies are still around
Ghosts, in contrast, actually do less than regular lemmings, but precisely in that lies their strength.
So if Lemmings were programmed in Python and I wanted to add ghosts, I'd simply copy and paste everything I need for normal lemmings, and then delete everything that defines an interaction with an object. Done!
I think it's just pretty plain to see that ghosts are in many ways strictly more versatile than disarmers
simply copy and paste everything
We had resons to burry our past sins and we should not open the old graves again.
@IchoTolot: You wouldn't have to copy it over and over - just once ;) .
Ghosts, however, have very clearly defined uses and limitations
I'd also make the case that disarmers are less intuitive than ghosts
may I remind you of features that got removed from Old to New Formats that are now being considered for reintroduction
Ghosts, however, actually require less interaction in total than even regular lemmings!
Also I see the object ignoring not really valuable, there are enough substitutes for it as well.
I know that ghosts can fly so I expect these ghosts to also fly around the map. Ghosts are far far far away from being intuitive.
This does not mean they will not cause a mess in the code. Consider the regular lemming to be the "base scenario". Any deviation from this - doesn't matter if they do more, do less, or just do something differently - adds complexity to the code. Just because our test is "if the lemming is a ghost, do nothing" rather than "if the lemming is a ghost, do this extra thing" doesn't change that much - it's still an extra test, and an extra special case to handle differently from normal lemmings.
They just introduce a whole new set of behaviors to the game and as a result making it a lot more complicated. The lemmings fear ghosts thing also can lead to a ton of fiddly stuff.
(at least to the physics; you'll still have to work out details of the appearance changes that distinguish them from normal lemmings, and to distinguish whether the ghost is also climber or whatever)
namida's opinion that the old ghost gimmick didn't ultimately contribute much is perhaps a good data point to take into account, even if that gimmick had other extra behaviors (eg. fear ghost) that we don't want nor care about here.
If I had to say anything on the subject, it'd be better to reinvent the ghosts in a new intuitive way. Like having certain objects be affected by ghosts if the check box for em is turned on. And if so an obvious clue would tell you that ghosts can be affected by it and lemmings cannot.
Or have a skill that can be assigned to not just ghosts but zombies too, making them come back to life as normal lemmings. A "revitalizer" if you will.
Instead of just declining the idea of the problems it had, why not find a way to turn things on their head and make something better or work. I rather give this a shot if there's a new way to make em work. (Like stated above) because I'm willing to converse and sell ideas to add depth to level creation rather than take away. We can't rely on standard stuff forever and it wouldn't hurt for once to give it shot. Because personally I rather stop with the instant and constant naysaying. Even unconventional things can work if remade and used properly.
I mainly ask this out of curiosity, but for how long did the ghost feature exist before its removal?
Seven months is not a long time. I've been working on GemLems for five months and I'm still on the first rank. We all have different amounts of real-life commitments, and it can be hard to squeeze in time to work on level creation.
Since IchoTolot's main argument seems to be that next to no-one liked and used ghosts when they were removed (failing to consider that several other people have joined the forums in the meantime), this is starting to fall apart right there:
Most packs of decent quality are at least several months in the making, if not a year. My first packs were rushed out pretty quickly, and as a consequence, their quality is a lot less consistent than my younger releases. namida seems to be able to create a lot of challenging levels + graphic sets in a very short amount of time, as demonstrated once again by Lemmings Plus VI. The majority of people however do take their time to develop larger packs:
I'd totally go with the "pick the rules for the next contest" option... and then make those rules "create a level involving a ghost or a gimmick"!
It's fine if they are simply available, IchoTolot; it's not like you have to use them if you don't like them!
or gravity reversal as shown in Lemmings Revolution are all options as well.
Gravity reversal has been ruled out on several occasions due to the coding complexity.
So gravity reversal and skills that go into opposite directions by themselves would make each other redundant anyway.
I don't think there's any rule stopping regular users from setting up unofficial contests.
Sorry for being somewhat late to the party... :-[
As far as I can see, the "levels for V10" subboard is not locked at all. Has someone opened it in the meantime? I am totally ok with it being open.
If ghost would be implemented as a (permanent) skill, then you would get lots of weird interactions, because currently no lemming can use two skills at the same time.
- Overwrite a lot of the lemming counting code, e.g. to determine when there are still enough lemmings around to complete the level, when to quit a level as there are no more living lemmings, ...
- If you code the "fear" aspect (which was in my opinion the major point in favor of keeping ghosts in the first place, because it was something really unique), you would have to write a lot of completely new code to handle this, or you would have to copy all the zombie trigger area map and adapt to to the fear aspect. But this would mean copying a lot of code, which is distributed among a lot of different methods and is not at all in one place.
Even then you will have to make sure this code is bug-free. And given all the problems and glitches we had with getting static force fields working correctly, I really don't want to deal with moving ones...
because ghosts will not drown when falling into water and will not splat when hitting from high above assuming they land in water.
All right, changed v10 level board from (No New Topics) to (Default) and moved the Ghost level sharing topic to 10 levels.